A First Look At "Fairgrounds" Left 4 Dead 2 Campaign

Left 4 Dead 2's survivors find themselves in a creepy amusement park after the zombie apocalypse - take a look at a L4D2 campaign so new, Valve doesn't have a name for it yet! Also, Gabe Newell talks about the L4D2 boycott.

On last night's episode of Gametrailers TV, host Geoff Keighley headed over to Valve to check out the latest and greatest of what was under development. Among other things, viewers got a sneak peek at one of the new campaigns in Left 4 Dead 2, the "fairgrounds" level.

After fleeing Savannah, Georgia, L4D2's survivors - Coach, Nick, Rochelle, and Ellis - find themselves in a traffic jam, and so end up traversing the ruins of a fairground. You know, because few things are creepier than places of fun and joy turned into killing fields. According to L4D2 writer Chet Faliszek, this campaign is "so new, so breaking, that we haven't even given it a name or a tagline yet."

There's not much footage yet, but we know that at some point there will be a merry-go-round. Fighting zombies on a merry-go-round seems like a perfectly entertaining pastime to me, but there's quite a bit of potential in this sort of campaign for trickery. Fighting in a house of mirrors, anyone?

Of course, there's a lot more in this episode for L4D fans - Faliszek talks about the new characters, weapons, and storytelling elements upcoming in the sequel, and shows off the new "Crash Course" DLC for L4D1. Which, Gabe Newell points out, was Valve's attempt to directly address the concerns of the Left 4 Dead 2 boycotters.

"The people who are leading the boycott group have some really legitimate concerns," says Newell. "One is, 'If you guys have announced this [making a sequel in less than a year], this is something you've never done before. Does this mean you're not going to support Left 4 Dead? Rather than get into a debate with these people, we've tried to just show them that we're actively going to support Left 4 Dead, that we love it, and that Left 4 Dead 2 really is a legitimate sequel and separate from Left 4 Dead 1, as well as making sure we do a good job integrating these two communities."